


Why Not Here?

by OliviaZircon



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Secret Samol, dream - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-09-18 05:05:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9369248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OliviaZircon/pseuds/OliviaZircon
Summary: Hella dreams deeply as the remainder of Boat Party escape from Nacre.Written for Frankie as their Secret Samol fandom exchange gift.





	1. Chapter 1

The unevenness of the carriage’s wheels in the muddy road from Nacre revealed itself to be an oscillation as the movements slowly unfurled to reveal their rhythm moving upwards from the wheels, into the axles floors and walls, and finally through the plush seats into Hella’s muscles. She never would have noticed that the repeating way the mud bounced and pulled at the wheels before, but with Lem’s head bowed low over his violin and a slow and mournful melody playing over and over with a single change each time until it became a new song - and then transforming again - her eyelids were drawn inevitably to a close.

The shifting song seemed to carry them away ever faster from Nacre, and as it did Hella felt a tranquility seep into her bones that she had not known since the night she had stayed back from her friends to kill the man she had known and trusted since the day she left her home on Ordenna. She fell away from the royal carriage and into a dream of times that never were.

 

 

Hella saw a taproom ablaze, Calhoun laughing uproariously and spinning with arms wide in the center as a clarinet and what could only be Lem’s fiddle played an upbeat tune she had never heard before that promised broad streets and fair-days. On second pass there were no flames blanketing the room, but the rather the flame of the setting sun bursting red through the windows. It lay the foundation for the light of candles and torches which numbered more than a score and were spread throughout the entire room. Not only were the walls Hella leaned against bathed in the warm glow but it fell across the tables and hung from the rafters, fully enveloping the room in its red hue. 

Hella was almost certain that she had never been here , but it was exactly the sort of place Calhoun loved to discover whenever they came ashore after a sojourn together on the sea between Hieron and Ordenna aboard his ship. A pale woman with shining eyes bewildered at how any one man could be so drunk yet fluid afoot while dancing clapped and sang loudly until Calhoun caught one of her hands and pulled her into a twirl. Her brother - or so he looked - cheered her on and simply freed up the captain’s other hand of the full tankard of ale it held, taking over the chorus. The whole inn was absolutely alive with energy - a storm of it coming off of Calhoun - clapping and stomping, and none of them noticed his eyes darting to Hella’s face to see if he had done enough to break her claim that she never dances. 

She found herself clapping along, but she wasn’t the type to claim another, so there was no jealousy towards the flaxen-haired villager, only amusement that Calhoun might have thought this would do anything. His ploy ineffective he returned the dizzy girl to her seat and clapped his hands over his head.

Calhoun’s hands were massive, and toughened from decades at the helm of his ship, so when that clap came, it cut through the sound of the sheets of rain hitting the deck and soaking the sails. It cut through the arguments of the nervous crew, and the clap snapped the attention of even Hella off the shore they’d never sailed to together of the western face of Ordenna.

Yet another place they had never been? Hella knew now for certain that this must be a dream; how else could a clap in an inn put her in the eye of a storm? Even given a certain detachment from the events because of that knowledge, she felt her body turn from the railing and begin to jog to him when she saw the might of the storm equalled in his gaze. He was no carousing drunk in this moment, but the captain whose gesture carried the wisdom of a life facing the sea and the very worst that rode upon it and the most devilish monsters that hid circling beneath.

His orders rang out across the thunder and Hella was hauling the sails down before the crew even turned to do it, in truth maybe this was what drew her to him more than the singing and dancing and partying. Calhoun at sea was the man in his full power. He knew the way through any storm and against any foe. Even if the way forward was to flee he knew in his blood and breath what the true course of action was. Hella was the same in a fight, and it was knowing that Calhoun had the same rare kind of power born of moments of rending danger that had called her to stick by him so often before the adventure at Eventide and even after.

The shore suddenly rushed upon the ship at the same moment that the cloud surrounding the mast burst into light. Hella’s eyes were overwhelmed by brilliance as her ears were deafened. Her body was thrown fully into the air and she was adrift in the storm.

Calhoun lay on his mattress against the forward wall of his cabin. Sprawled drunkenly across the whole damn thing with only half his body covered by the thin sheets. His princely duvet from Rosemerrow pooled by the foot of the bed despite the gusts of cold air streaming through the open window. His mass of long hair seemed to be doing just enough to keep the sun from hungover eyes that he could resist the afternoon sun’s light. Hella had only been in here a couple times and he’d never been in that bed alone - or without the duvet - once she’d made her way in. It was at the sight of a bottle of looted liquor that Calhoun had called “absinthe” spilling slowly across the ship’s log on his carved desk that she was certain of the fantasy.

Hella could always tell when Calhoun lied to her, and he hadn’t when he confided to her that the only time he had had the green liquor was when the two of them drank it. They had taken the bottle from corked to empty together on the deck of the ship. Beneath the stars a month before Hella had even met Hadrian, Lem, Fero, and Fantasmo on the mission to the Isle of Eventide.

 

Hella’s head had been pounding for an eternity before she opened her eyes, and when she did, she wished she hadn’t.


	2. Chapter 2

Hella’s head pounds for an eternity before she opens her eyes. When they open, she hates herself about as much as the rolling waves below. 

The afternoon sun’s beams crash through the windows of the Captain’s quarters like plunging oak logs. After another two waves roll her from toes to top, Hella can barely stand the movement anymore and flops over onto her back. When her hand knocks against another, her breath catches for a moment. The moment is a short one because it could only be Calhoun, and with him by her side there was no need for worrying.

At least, not until he realizes that they only have enough alcohol left onboard for three more days. Once the ship dries up, his pouting would be incessant until a new supply was procured.

She reaches down slowly and her knuckles brush against his bare stomach in a shove turned gentle caress -- weakened by her hangover. Finally he gives a rumbling cough and winces against the light. Calhoun moans and pulls Hella down to him to hide his face in her neck, drawing a chortle from Hella.

“What’s this?” Hella laughs out. “You’re happy to fight pirates, drink ale through the night, and run a ship, but one bottle of absinthe and you’ve turned into a mewling kitten?”

 

Calhoun lets out a groan like the last gust sliding away from a sail, something so pitiful that Hella can’t help but adore him just a little bit. It makes her put her hand on the back of his head and hold him close.

A moment later, the moan sighs to an end and turns to a kiss, cracked lips scraping on Hella’s exposed neck. And now she sighs too, her fingers twining to hold tight as she tilts her head away in encouragement. The sweetness of the moment serves to soothe her aching head and puts a touch of fire through her heart.

 

Fire in her heart, her gut, her throat, through every vein in her arms and legs. Hella lives in that fire as she takes her longest pull from the bottle yet. She tosses it to Calhoun, and a burning laugh rolls up from her belly as he leans so far from his seat on the ship’s banister to catch it that he falls to the slick deck of his ship. Cradling the bottle, he glares up at Hella and takes a slow shallow pull that goes just one count longer than Hella lasted. The ever-revolving members of Calhoun’s boat party take turns encouraging him and cajoling him, and he flushes.

Hella knows that flush has less to do with the alcohol - Calhoun is the greatest drunk she’s met in her life - and more to do with the liveliness of the world the man had built for himself on this ship. There was always a party on Calhoun’s ship, because he seemed to hate quiet moments even more than himself.

The bottle of green liquor had been in the captain’s quarter of the pirate ship that they had routed the day before, brought out by Calhoun just as Hella slit the throat of the ghoulish captain. Calhoun knew the stuff and claimed it was stronger than any whisky in all of Velas by half. It had only taken a day for him to relent on holding it as a trophy and agree to drink it, if only Hella agreed to finish the bottle off with him in one night. 

The second time they met Brandish had gone -- considerably worse. Instead of remembering that, Hella falls into the bed and remembers the last afternoon she spent with Calhoun before they met the pirate king again.

The heat comes off both of them in waves, mixing in the immeasurably small space between their touching bodies to radiate through the whole room, the cool of evening gone in the same moment their restraint left. Hella’s knees rest on either side of Calhoun’s hips as she leans down to visit a kiss on him as thanks. She climbs off of him and pats his chest playfully.

When Hella lays down by Calhoun’'s side, leaving the sheets pooled around their feet, She asks him, "Did you know that you make the cutest faces during?"

"Um," coughs out Calhoun. "I don't don’t think I’ve ever heard that." They can both tell he’s lying, she knows how old he really is. "I’ve never exactly had cause to look in a mirror when I’ve been in bed with someone either."

"You know I can tell when you lie to me, right? Your brows curve like you’re asking something you don’t want an answer to."

Calhoun bumps elbows with her and snorts. "You're supposed to have the grace to let me pretend you’re privy to secrets others haven’t seen," he says, teasing. "I didn’t know that I do that when I lie, though, I’ll have to work on it."

"All that stuff is bullshit, honestly," Hella says, propping herself up on an elbow to look down at her companion, as he looks off out of one of the windows. “I don’t give a damn who you’ve been with or what you’ve done, we’re the ones here today. If I’m going to bother to be here tomorrow, it’ll be because we’re honest with each other.”

A dark look crosses Calhoun’s eyes but it fades so quick Hella can almost convince herself she imagined it -- it doesn’t work.

The shadows of the desk and the mattress on the floor stretch out and turn pitch black. The room tilts away from Hella and she falls out of the bed, shaking her from the memory of an afternoon of falling for her friend for the first time. She drives herself onto feet and notes that she’s dressed again and has her sword.

She draws the blade and holds it ready. She hears the storm over Nacre rushing back and the clinking of the cell closing. She’s in the room again and standing over the corpse of the man she had called Calhoun. Behind her fine fabric rustles.

Hella spins around and he is standing there, dressed in the uniform of black silk and white pearls of Nacre -- there is nothing of the lively Calhoun in his eyes, only the cold regard and brimming vengeance of Angelo.

“Well then, my Ordennan sister-” The voice from Angelo’s body, but the lips are pressed tight in a trembling line. “It seems you knew my brother quite well before you slew him. A pity that you had so little time together.”

The black silk tunic falls away, and as the white voluminous dress below is revealed, Hella knows it was not Angelo’s face at all, but Adelaide’s. The Reluctant Savior smiles mirthlessly and looks down at Hella’s sword as it drops to the floor of Angelo’s cell.

“I killed you; This has to be a dream. I killed him too.” Hella’s eyes well up at admitting the betrayal.

“I assure you this is the realest dream you’ve ever lived, Hella. I hope we can get to know each other better. After all, we have a lifetime together ahead of us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to @asleewrites and @mixolydias for beta work on this chapter! and Frankie I'm sorry it took so damn long to finish your Secret Samol this time around, but I hope it's good enough to make up for the wait.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a slightly edited version of chapter one, chapter two should be up in the next day.


End file.
